Depths
by unnafraher
Summary: Years later, Juudai visits Johan. Though Juudai won't say it at first, there's something that finally brought him around.
1. prologue

**AN: **This one is pretty much what it says on the tin: a prologue for a chaptered fic set some years after the series. Overall there is a larger plot, but most of what happens in this story is driven by the characters, of whom there are a few. There's an OC that figures a bit prominently in the first few chapters but, don't worry, she's there in a purely ancillary role, though hopefully she's interesting enough with her own quick sub-plot.

Anyway, all comments are very much welcome and appreciated. If there's a problem or question, I invite those kinds of responses, too.

* * *

When the gust of wind from the greying sea dies down, Johan lets his hand return to his side. His fingers brush over his nose on the way down to check that a slight itch his right nostril is just that, and not something that has been blown onto his face, like a speck of Baltic brine, or an insect that might want something from him. The lattice of calluses on his joints is enough to ease the itching. He hums a satisfied note, and blinks, and he rests his thumb in the belt loop closest to the deck snug against his back.

Johan takes a set of steps to his right to position himself behind a black, railed fence. He leans on it and the metal is quite chilly, he feels it pressing against him even through the layers of his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt. His elbows rest on the rounded top of the railing. His hands he folds under his chin. The softest part of it, the plain of flesh under his jaw, hardly ever touched, feels cold on his palms. His face, he gathers, must have been more numbed by the wind than he thought.

Maybe he shouldn't be staring out so far, he thinks. It's too far for too long. The feeling haunting him hasn't left him—this vague oppression, this meaninglessly meaningful gloom that can't be examined, budged, or reasoned with. He can sense it in him all the way down to his toes that feel sluggish as he wiggles them inside woollen socks and brown, round-toed boots. He can imagine something congealing and thickening in his veins and tongue, something bloated and malformed and disturbing like a gas mask. Something that crowds into secret spaces rubbed against but never before violated, welling there until it settles over everything a dark red shade—the world would be bleeding.

What could possibly be so invasive?

It must be something he's doing. If it was something external and threatening he knows that his family would be involved by now. Vigilant as they are, and as serious as they take their roles as guardians so that they might never fail him again, the Gem Beasts are always on top of this sort of thing. Outside factors being eliminated leaves only one possible source. So, he should know what's wrong. _Should _be able to describe the first moment he realised there was this cloying sense of something.

What he does recognise is that it isn't fear. Nor it is dread, but a thing tinged with resignation and a kind of certainy that comes with knowing what will happen and when, just as when a celestial body has flung itself into the trajectory of the Earth and their meeting is imminent, and then the ending could not possibly be in doubt. At this time why would you bother yourself worrying about the end when there are so many other things you suddenly need to concern yourself with: whom do you need to fix things with, whom do you need to finally, _finally _spout pent-up rages at, whom do you wish to die beside? Like reading the last page of a novel before it ought to be, so many nerves are spared over the course of the story by knowing what will be. This leaves more space and capicities for things that matter, like trying to figure out what free will is, and how to exerise it in these situations.

There's a gull that cries, and a bit of sunlight filtering through a thinning in the clouds onto Johan. Then it's gone. It's sudden absence leaves his back cold. "Ah, it has gotten a bit chilly," he says, and thinks he ought to go inside, and that's what makes him remember.

His first semi-final duel is soon.

He looks down, fidgets with the sleeve of his sports jacket until it's up past his wrist, and checks the time. It's a quarter over the hour if his watch his correct, and he paid what he considers good money to ensure that it always would be. It's also a Friday.

Johan nods a little to himself. His chin he tucks down and into the recess of his scarf and upturned collar, eyes closed as he thinks. After a while of nothing he begins to walk to help himself mentally reconstruct the path he has taken to get to this point. There are bicyclists, cross walks with bodies and shapes moving in them, cars of all colours, an out-of-order fountain, an array of cafés in stylish buildings cramped with too much history—all bright flashes of interest in the dim and chaotic jumble of his afternoon. All are just details.

Opening his eyes, he finds himself next to a row of fun and eclectic and unhelpful houseboats.

At that admission Ruby materialises in the crook of his arm. She speaks to him.

"Hah, just a little, yeah, but you know me! Can you get me back, Ruby?"

She mewls once, twice, and his smiles crumples a bit. His laugh lines are gone.

"Well, that's definitely a problem," he admits. "I hadn't realised I walked so far. But, well, I guess I could look at it like this: I'm a professional. I'm not late, everyone else is just early."

He laughs. Then Ruby moves up to his shoulder, he untucks his arms from his body, and together they set off for the Arena. He's in no doubt that he will be late. Though it _is_ a bit of a problem, he knows, not to mention rude, which he doesn't generally like to be, so he will hurry, will do his best, will get there with Ruby's help to sure he goes where he needs to be.

He wants to duel, too. His opponent is a rising Croatian star who'll be his first Eastern European opponent in a while. This's a prospect that now motivates him even further and brings a marked urgency to his steps. At the end of this canal, things begin to strike him as looking more and more familiar.

He's thinking he recognises that Moroccan café, surely, with its notable Mahgrebian ambiance in this Germanic city, and his destination suddenly seems all the more close—when a motorbike captures his attention.

Apparently he has the driver's attention, too, for the familiar silver vehicle comes ripping in his direction. It stops at the pavement just centimetres from the ledge—a testament to skill and focus and concentration—but the bike's droning does not stop for they will soon need to be off.

The driver removes her helmet. The next thing she does is toss him it and reach for a second, less protective one for herself.

"What are you doing?" She levels her gaze at him, her strikingly blue eyes.

"I'm trying to get back to the tournament."

"Come one, Johan, we've got twenty minutes."

In a synchronised set of actions she scoots to the back of the seat, he gets on and takes over balancing the bike, they put on their helmets.

She leans forward. "Take Amayer, okay? It will get you to H. C. Andersen and past Tivoli."

"Northwest, then?"

She nods into his shoulder, once, because the passenger's helmet does not have a visor that will dig into him, and then sits back and reinforces her grip on the sides of the black leather seat. The tips of her fingers are already going numb.

Lovisa, who hates the wind on her face, scrunches her eyes and begins to count down the seconds.

They may be on time, if they are lucky.

**. . .**

After his victory, they go to a beer garden with hours extended to take advantage of the tournament's large international crowd. By this time of the year some of the gardens are already closed for the season. But here Johan knows the owner, and the alcohol is munificent and more than enough to deflect any autumnal chill.

It helps, too, that both his face and his pride are currently glowing.

While he socialises with another new crowd, she alternates running numbers on a tablet, checking social media, responding to social media, and nursing a beer. She's somewhere between none and her first one. She's fairly certain that she hasn't actually finish a whole bottle yet. Rather someone mistook her first half-empty one as their own and walked off with it; this second one was given to her by someone who asked her about _hygge _in an attempt to pick her up so bad, the attempt's blatantness would have killed it had his advances had any chance of success in the first place.

To him she responded that _hygge_ was a thing she knew about, yes, but it was something she only cared to share with other girls. But there was no harm done, she'd said, if he left her alone then.

No more harm than some some eighteen year old with a free microblog was trying to do to her mentor. To the accusations of fraud that have been sitting on her tablet for minutes, she replies,

_Obviously you have never truly cared about something or you would know that Johan Andersen would never be able to hurt his family like that. Cheating. Honestly. You could not understand that credibility and incentives are much more complex than you think they are._

She's almost too righteous and riled in the moment to check her English before sending her response out into the world's digital aether.

But she has a responsibility.

Over her shoulder Johan's crowd has dwindled down to a small handful. Clusters that have broken off are tending towards the exit of the garden, for after coming away from the influence of Johan's gravity, the realisation how of late it _really _is, is like a wave of cold water splashed upon the face. The amount of time he can take away from others is titanic. That's how good at this he's become.

Then the only lights left are the Chinese lanterns with their cheerful, but shaded, glow.

After dealing with a particular barrage of jargon that needed to be run through several downloaded dictionaries—one day soon she _will_ finish that translator—she looks up again. The two of them are mostly alone in the coloured gloom now. Johans scoots over to her once he's aware of her gaze. He brings nothing him with him.

Then he smiles at her, earnest, but he knows immediately that she will see through it. Lovisa has been his intern—and his proxy manager—too long now not to notice the things he doesn't want anyone to. Try as he might, lying by omissions in body language is an art he has yet to master.

But then, she smiles, too. "You're not nearly drunk enough to look like that."

"Bah. I'm tired."

She nods, looks around at the long table where they are seated. Out of the scores of bottles crowded around empty plates, she'd guess that maybe five of them were his. Six, if he'd been asked to autograph something for his entire family.

"Thanks," he offers after stretching his arms across his torso. His shoulder pops.

"For...?"

"Picking me up. I know how much you hate driving that thing. I kinda hate it, too. Way too noisy."

"Don't mention it," she says with a shrug as she looks past him. The real issue she doesn't want to bring up, she can't sound it out around the knot in her throat.

_Why are you wandering? Where are you going?_

"Just pay more attention, yeah? This duel was for a sponsor who's, as they say, looking at younger bucks."

"I'm only twenty-five!" He exclaims, and laughs.

"Yeah, but with the work you've done in your career already, the rates he'd have to pay may be too high for him to want to risk locking into a ten or twenty year contract with you."

To Johan this sounds absurd. And he laughs again. But he nor she set the rates, he knows that, they're the result of something people call "the market". He burns a little with his dislike for business, going over some well-memorised refrains from the ongoing spiel he's composed in his head about privatised duelling. He feels charged for a moment.

And then returns the fatigue. Now he's so cold.

Pulling himself up, he sighs and the night's breezes rustle things around them.

They agree that it's time to head back to his flat. Usually it's leased out and a headache to him because of it, but occasionally he's glad that he has somewhere of his own here in Copenhagen that's not constantly subjected to some kind of attention.

No-one in this building knows who their neighbour is.

So that's why it's even stranger when they receive a knock on the door a few minutes after the modern grandfather clock has chimed three. Johan answers the door as Lovisa, a hand fidgeting in her white-blonde hair, watches from her bed made up on one of the two identical sofas placed in the flat's living room. The moon has long since sunk out of the sky.

He doesn't look back.

Nor does he move, so all she can do is hear their exchange—the person at the door is loud, and then Johan responds in a hushed but excited tone. Uncomfortable, she swallows at her realisation: they are speaking Japanese. For a while things are a bit filmy.

Then, movement.

Johan steps aside. He doesn't need to say what he says next. "We've got a visitor."

She doesn't ask whom. She simply stands up. Lost in a fog, wandering in an endless swell of unfathomable power, she experiences the utterly human feeling of awe in the presence of something she knows will still _be _long after she is gone, long after own atoms have been diffused throughout the multiverse.

"You're Yuuki Juudai," she says to the brown-haired streak of red.. She reaches out and shakes his hand.

They all look at each other.


	2. i

Johan understands the misunderstanding at once. They are all in different places, linguistically. He laughs twice, thrice, and sweet excitement is still chiming beneath his skin. His friend's sudden appearance is just too good to ruin yet with having to explain and adjust things for everyone's needs. He's also a titch too warm and he blames this on the alcohol.

Lovisa turns to face him, and she asks him—though the way she sets her arms against her body makes it seem like she has figured it out already—"Juudai doesn't speak Norwegian, does he?"

"Nope."

"I understand my name," Juudai adds, in Norwegian, and he's smiling at his helpful contribution. Juudai's also just really cheerful, Johan notices. His friend is composed of more radiant joy than he remembers. He thinks—and hopes, lightly—that it might be attributed to mutual joy at their reunion. At least partially.

"Nice to meet you. You are?" Juudai asks her, switching to English so that they are all on the same register. His English is slightly dusky with an accent.

During this exchange, she and Juudai are engaged in eye contact.

"Lovisa Þórarinsdóttir," she says.

He looks at her as though he knows an explanation is forthcoming.

She responds before their silence can verge on staring, "It's Icelandic."

"Huh, so you're from Iceland! I haven't been there yet." And Juudai lapses into silence again, this time openly contemplating her. "Though, you know, you look kind of familiar."

Johan notices that she shrugs, and he knows why she does so. It's not that she's disinterested or trying push Juudai off of the subject, she's just certain that Juudai's never met her before. As for maybe seeing her likeness somewhere, there's not a chance. Not in a context in which she'd stand out.

"I wonder," she says, and then she yawns so wide her body shudders.

Johan takes a step towards her. "Hey, Lovisa, why don't you head to bed. It's been a long day for you."

"But—"

"Don't worry about us. Go ahead and sleep in the bedroom. I'll sleep out here, and this guy, he can sleep anywhere." Johan offers her an open-palmed gesture to reinforce that it's okay, he really means what he's saying, she ought to just crash in his room, there's a time when privacy shouldn't have to be directly asked for. Johan isn't looking at him but he can sense Juudai's amusement.

"Really, I—" And she stops her objection there. She looks at him, to Juudai, and then back at him, as if looking for approval, even though she knows that she doesn't need it. She's not slow about these kinds of things. "Thank you," she adds, and with that she gratefully bows out.

But she doesn't walk too quickly, too eagerly.

This leaves the two of them alone, and Johan is very much aware of this—feels it acutely in his numbing palms, in the streaks of heat that are jolting up his legs. He senses that his family is either asleep or purposefully staying low. He's too tired to fully search them out.

But here they are. The two of them. He would hug Juudai but the proper time for that seems to have passed. They didn't touch when Juudai stood in his doorway.

"Who'ss that?" Juudai asks and this pulls Johan's attention back outwards. The shift is a strange sensation that leaves him feeling a bit nauseous; he must be more buzzed than he gave himself credit for. He doesn't want to attribute being so thrown-off to Juudai's gravity. It can't be that, because don't the two of them just fit so well together? Theirs is a rhythm that flows easy an overflowing stream.

"She's my intern," Johan says. Then adds, to avoid being disingenuous, "though I'm thinking of hiring her more permanently and promoting her to manager. She's basically my living, breathing day planner."

Juudai laughs.

"Hey, you know what," Johan gripes, "being a professional duellist can actually be a pretty dull business. It's really easy to spend more time doing business, than actually duelling!"

Juudai softly hums his agreement. "That's what I've heard. That's why it's just the local, grass-roots tournaments for me."

Johan knows that _that_ isn't completely true, but it's so obvious that he doesn't bother hounding Juudai about it. Of course being constantly on the move would constrict Juudai's duelling to minor leagues: infamous as he may be, without a high enough rank, and without the funds to drop on entry fees, he simply isn't able to participate in the kind of spectacles that have become Johan's main source of income. But then what is stability, with the potential to turn monotonous, compared to a sojourn and its daily sense of wonder and fulfilment? That's how he imagines their lives could differ.

Johan shakes his head. "Anyway—you, Juudai! Are you thirsty? Hungry? Tired? It's three in the morning, you know. And how have you been?"

Juudai chuckles again, and he takes this barrage of questions as a chance to sit down. He walks by Johan, he wafts right by, and he plops down on the sofa that's not set up as a bed. "To answer your questions, uh—no, no, yes, a lot and—good. I've been really good. You?"

It takes Johan a bit to catch up, he's still caught in a second that's gone by—he's rooted in that second that Juudai moved past him, the whole span of it casting them and everything in a low-burning red glow, and this moment he's stuck in is thickening around him like, it's becoming amber, and he's rooted to that spot. Then he blinks and says, "I'm pretty tired, yeah. But I'm happy to see you."

"I'm glad I came," Juudai says as he moves one of the cushions over and sets it behind his back so that he can recline against it. Pharaoh, out of nowhere, hops up onto the sofa in a preposterously athletic display, and curls up against Juudai's right thigh. Without a lot of thought Juudai reaches out to stroke the feline's head.

Johan blinks again, trying his very best to focus on _something. _It feels like there's something he needs to ask, something that's important, but he cannot find it for it has been taken from him. The words are no longer his. There's sand behind his eyes.

What he does manage, eventually, is, "So, what brings you around?"

Juudai dims; Johan notices the change. "I'm not sure."

There's something more there, Johan's sure of that. So he waits to hear it.

"But I did want to see you," Juudai adds.

That wasn't what Johan was waiting for.

But it's something, and Johan walks over to the couch that Juudai is not on and sits down in the middle. He thinks a little bit about what Juudai said, lets the words echo, pleasantly—and he smiles. He'll take it. As for being circumspect, he figures that he's just too drunk and too tired to bother about something that most likely isn't worth a bit of exertion. If it was important Juuai will tell him tomorrow.

Another thing slips away. Johan closes his eyes. He opens them.

Suddenly Juudai is all that he can see. Face, hair, eyes, shoulders—Juudai's standing before him, leaning over, coming into his space to make contact. Johan stares up into Juudai's close, close eyes.

Juudai's looking into his eyes. Looking into _him, _Johan's sure of this, and for a dreadful moment he's absolutely certain that he will not be to give Juudai what he's looking for. His insides quiver. But then the moment passes as all things eventually do.

Juudai moves again. He's coming even closer. Johan realises that Juudai is about to touch him, and it's not at all what he was expecting. Juudai rests his hand on Johan's left shoulder, their foreheads are a whisper apart.

"Hey, you, before you fall asleep sitting up, can you tell me where you keep your sheets?"

Starting, Johan shakes his head and says, with a little extra vigour to evince that he's awake, "I'll get you set up. You just relax."

"Nah, let me help!"

Johan means to shoot him down again and insist on being a good host, but he can tell it's a losing battle, so he saves himself the grief. Standing up, he moves to his hallway cupboard where all of the bedding is kept. He moves on his toes so his footsteps don't wake Lovisa or any of the neighbours to their left, right, above them, or below them. All that's left in the cupboard are the Egyptian cotton sheets and an out-of-season eiderdown duvet that was given to him by a too friendly sponsor several years ago when Johan bought this flat out-right with the bulk of a tournament's prize money. Johan is embarrassed by how silly such sumptuously indulgent bed clothes could come across as.

But their ridiculous opulence doesn't seem to bother Juudai, who accepts them with a gratitude Johan suspects he'd show for even a scratchy, super-flammable polyester sleeping bag. It's touching.

As they walk back to the sofas with Johan bringing up the rear, he wonders where that word came from. _Touching_. What is he—an endeared parent?

The Norwegian find that he's still stuck on this as he turns off the lights and they lay down on their respective beds and begin to settle down. It occurs to him that it's now too late to grab some extra pyjamas for Juudai to wear; by now his intern is definitely asleep. But Juudai seems okay. He's stripped down to his boxers and shirt. His blazer and pants he hangs over the side of the sofa. So Johan doesn't broach the subject.

To settle himself, Johan has to remove a few things from his makeshift bed that he feels as lumps along the side of his body. There's a thick book that Lovisa has stuffed between the cushions, and here's half of yesterday's _Aftenposten. _She insists on a Norwegian newspaper because reading Danish news might throw off the progress she's made forcing herself to relearn how to spell a Scandinavian language. She learnt Danish before Norwegian, for Danish was one of the foreign languages that was taught to school children in her country when she was growing up. No matter how close the two languages are, they do have their regular differences that make them distinct.

If he's honest, it strikes Johan as a little strange that she has trouble keeping these easy differences straight because he's seen written Icelandic: on maps, in books, her letters home. If she can manage to spell_ that_ archaic language_,_ how in the world could she have trouble distinguishing something like _hva_ and _hvad_? With her own lilting and sometimes cloying accent, her Danish sounds like Norwegian already, so really this is an issue of literacy.

"Good night, Johan," Juudai says from the other sofa.

"Night, Juudai," comes his answer. He puts the paper on the floor, puts the thoughts it's conjured aside, and rolls onto his side. "Sleep well, yeah?"

"I will."

"It's good to see you, you know."

"Yeah," Juudai says, and that's all there is for a while.

.

But Johan doesn't fall asleep. He's too tired and too muddled to manage to rest his mind and decompress. Something is going on. He couldn't say what it is, but whatever it is, there's a lot of it happening.

He could also do with a good piss, too. The only problem is that, besides a swollen bladder and a definite exhaustion, he's physically comfortable. The blankets and sheets he has enveloped himself in are too much like a warm cotton and silk cocoon. They would of course still be warm when he got back from the lavatory. But this early in the morning a struggle with his body is an uphill battle. It would be even if he did have all of his wits about him.

He'll take care of it. Soon.

He shifts, sighs, and then gets up. A few moments later he finds himself lying back down without a clear memory of walking back. He can't be sure that he washed his hands, but his bladder feels lighter and there is no longer a poking pressure in his lower body.

Again he tries to rest. His thoughts he frees in whatever directions they wish to skitter. There's a taste in his mouth that reminds him of yeast.

The clock chimes again: it's four in the morning. The witching hour is over.

His eyes have adjusted to the darkness, he finds, and he realises that they have been left open for some time now. That's why he notices the subtle flickering in the air around his other sofa. Something is happening. There's an ethereal form that manifests over there.

He doesn't turn his head to look. He decides not to because he doesn't want to risk breaking the impression of him being asleep. He doesn't want to intrude, either, and a part of him admits, too, that he simply doesn't think that now is the best time to deal with everything that this encounter could dredge up. It wouldn't be fair. He doesn't blame his family for lying as low as they are.

Yubel has appeared. Yubel kneels on the floor, leans against the piece of furniture and unfurls scaled, membranous wings around Juudai in a starkly intimate gesture. Johan doesn't imagine that this is something he's meant to see. He closes his eyes and tries to swallow down the thing that's congealing in his throat.

"I know you're awake," Yubel says.

Johan isn't sure if she—he genders her as female, it's the sound of the voice that she chooses to use—is actually speaking or simply projecting into his mind. If asked he wouldn't be able to identity what language she's using so it's probably the latter. Some kind of latent connection he figures, or perhaps it's one of her many fearsome powers.

He doesn't sit up but he does roll over to face her with an easy smile. "Hey."

"I'm surprised you acknowledged me," she says, and she's at least facing him now. She has moved to perch on the back of the sofa now. Even with her wings tucked in her, and her body incorporeal, her form is strikingly large and impressive. It's clear that she's a capable predator.

But Johan doesn't feel that he's prey. He's just tired. "I don't have anything against your presence here. You're a guest just as much as Juudai is."

"They mind."

Cryptic as this is, it doesn't taken Johan two seconds to realise to whom she's referring. "Well, yeah, of course my family does. You hurt them. You hurt me."

"You're just more forgiving, then, Johan?"

A part of him suspects that this is an insult, something that she means ironically. He shakes it away as he runs through his memories and comes to a conclusion about something else. He can't remember the last time he actually _saw _Yubel. In those handful of times he's had with Juudai between his miraculous rescue and now, Yubel has only figured in as an extension of Juudai's soul. She'd there, always, but she'd never revealed herself and interacted with him. He wonders—has she just not wanted to bother with him, or is it a matter of pride for her?

"No," Johan breathes. "No, I'm not more forgiving than them. They just have different memories. They have more of them because they were awake the entire time. I may have been stuck in some pretty nasty dreams, but they went through, they had to experience that. It was real." He pauses a moment to let her have the space to react if she wants to. She does not twitch, but that might have something to do with her lack of material form. Her arms are crossed over her chest. He continues on. "But you would understand how they feel—they had to watch their loved one suffer."

"No." She states it so firmly, so plainly, Johan's genuinely confused for a moment. And a fighting instinct quickens hotly in his limbs. He's more than ready to stand up for his family and their authentic feelings because how dare _anyone_ question them.

But this isn't about that. He feels that. "But it's love that they feel for me. It's love that we feel, for each other." He isn't floundering, he isn't flailing, but he feels that he's grasping even as his pride inflates his chest. "We're a family."

"So?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"Not all love is equal," Yubel says, and this is the first and only thing that she properly vocalises. Her last syllable seems to reverberate in the whole room and it's an eerily supernatural effect because Johan knows his flat is too small for such sound effects.

Johan hides his sigh in a yawn that requires him to raise his arms above his head to stretch it out satisfactorily. He would say to her something like, _you've won, I don't doubt that, _but affirming what she already _knows_ may seem like an insult, or may simply come across as petty. He's also certain that she hasn't regarded him as competition for a long time. If she even did in the first place.

This victory is old news.

For a moment he has the strangest feeling of being watched.

A thought occurs to him: it's a stalemate. She will never apologise because there's not a trace of contrition in her entire being; who is he to expect something like that from her? But she won't hurt him, not again, because the two of them want the same thing, and what's more unifying than a common cause?

Time passes in waves that wash around him. He feels pleasantly adrift.

Yubel's singing in an unfathomably ancient tongue. It's a lullaby—that Johan can guess from the soft notes, the soft voice, the gentle repetitions. What he can't guess is for whom this performance is meant. But if it's for him, he'd only be mildly surprised. The tunes wondrous age is just proof of how enduring she truly is.

He falls to sleep.


End file.
